Bioarcheology has a “health” problem: Conceptualizing “stress” and “health” in bioarcheological research

This article provides a critical historical overview of the stress concept in bioarcheological research and critically evaluates the term "health" in reference to skeletal samples. Stress has a considerable history in 20th century physiological research, and the term has reached a critical capacity of meaning. Stress was operationalized around a series of generalized physiological responses that were associated with a deviation from homeostasis. The term was incorporated into anthropological research during the mid-20th century, and further defined in bioarcheological context around a series of skeletal indicators of physiological disruption and disease. Emphases on stress became a predominate area of research in bioarcheology, and eventually, many studies utilized the terms "health" and "stress" interchangeably as part of a broader, problem-oriented approach to evaluating prehistoric population dynamics. Use of the term "health" in relation to skeletal samples is associated with the intellectual history of bioarcheological research, specifically influences from cultural ecology and processualist archeology and remains problematic for two reasons. First, health represents a comprehensive state of well-being that includes physiological status and individual perception, factors that cannot be readily observed in skeletal samples. Second, the categorization of populations into relative levels of health represents a typological approach, however unintentional. This article advocates for the integration of methodological and theoretical advances from human biology and primatology, while simultaneously incorporating the theoretical constructs associated with social epidemiology into bioarcheological research. Such an approach will significantly increase the applicability of bioarcheological findings to anthropological and evolutionary research, and help realize the goal of a truly relevant bioarcheological paradigm.